Chicago Sinfonietta’s MLK concert to showcase new work inspired by cellist-novelist

Every lifetime is dotted with coincidences and unexpected connections. For the local musician and writer Edward Kelsey Moore, this weekend’s Chicago Sinfonietta concerts present one stranger than fiction.

Moore will play in the cello section for the world premiere of an orchestral suite that traces back to his life as a writer. The source of the music is the movie version of his own novel.

Asked about the convolutions of performing a suite that started with his own book, Moore says, “Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?”

To break it down a bit more clearly: Moore wrote the novel “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat,” the story of the lifelong friendship of three women who frequent the titular restaurant. The novel was published by Knopf in 2013. The film adaptation, starring Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Sanaa Lathan (“Love & Basketball”) and Uzo Aduba (“Orange Is the New Black”), came out in 2024, with a score by Kathryn Bostic.

The Sinfonietta’s music director, Mei-Ann Chen, invited Bostic to adapt the score into an orchestral suite for live performance. Bostic already had a relationship with the orchestra from her time as its artist in residence from 2020 to 2023. The suite premieres at the Sinfonietta's annual concerts to celebrate Martin Luther King Day Jan. 18 and 19.

The collision of the two worlds is an anomaly for the 65-year-old Moore. Generally, writing and music have been either-or for him, unless you count writing in the snatches of time during rehearsal breaks or creating a character with musical talent and ambition.

In his early adult years, it was all music. He received music degrees from Indiana and Stony Brook, and joined the Sinfonietta two years after its 1987 founding. He gave lessons, gigged and played in orchestras, all the while thinking about writing.

“I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a small child, since before I touched the cello,” Moore said, “but I just never could get myself to finish anything.” The remnants of this era still exist. “I have a big Tupperware tub down in the basement of my house that is full of things that I started and never finished.”

When he passed the milestone of turning 40, he had a fish-or-cut-bait moment. WBEZ hired him as part of a string quartet to play at a party after a short-story competition. By coincidence — more coincidence — he had backed out of entering that very competition.

“I sat there that night playing Mozart quartets for three hours, listening to everyone talk about how great these stories were,” he said. “The next year came along, I entered, and I happened to win. That really started things for me.”

Fast-forward a few years, Moore’s first published novel was “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat.” (It came after a false start. “I wrote a really, really terrible novel,” Moore said, “a little mystery that was set backstage at an orchestra that no one will ever read. It was really quite dreadful. The harpist did it.”) The film rights to “Supremes” were purchased before the book even came out. Around a decade later, Moore found himself observing as they filmed the adaptation.

It’s not common for the author of the source material to lurk on a movie set. Similarly, the composer of the score usually does her work in post-production. But one of the three friends, Clarice, is an accomplished pianist, so Bostic was invited to the set to consult on a scene where Clarice plays.

A member of the production team approached Moore, saying, “Oh, you’re a musician, right? The composer is here today. Her name’s Kathryn Bostic.” This happened after Bostic had premiered her commission “Portrait of a Peaceful Warrior” with the Sinfonietta during her residency. Moore remembered thinking, “Gosh, that name is familiar.”

They figured it out. “I just was blown away,” Bostic said. “The serendipity of meeting him and realizing the Chicago Sinfonietta connection was jaw-dropping.”

Scored for woodwinds, strings and piano, Bostic’s Emmy Award-nominated music for the film already had an orchestral sensibility. A motif that represents the three women’s friendship provides the seed for the suite, developing to reflect the arc of their friendship. Bostic also included her song “State of Grace,” which she sang in the film score and will sing live at the Sinfonietta performances.

Music by a Black composer, growing from text by a Black author, fits in perfectly for the MLK concerts, but would not be out of the ordinary for any Sinfonietta program. The orchestra celebrates "how rich we are because of our unique differences," as Mei-Ann Chen puts it.

For her part, Bostic saw a connection between Clarice’s “I really wanted to capture that, and the director agreed that this palette would serve that purpose.”

Moore wrote Clarice’s character informed by his background knowledge of classical music. Bostic chose an orchestral aesthetic because of Clarice. The adaptation into a suite for the Sinfonietta came naturally because of the orchestral aesthetic. And that brought it right back to Moore and his cello.

“I don’t know, maybe nobody on the Earth is going to be having the experience that I’m gonna have,” Moore said. “I want to sit with it and really enjoy it, and I think I will.”

Graham Meyer is a Chicago arts writer.